Mama Heating Pad in the Brooder (Picture Heavy) - UPDATE

[Coop de Grass]

I was going to put my MHP in the coop when the next batch of eggs hatched in a week. In the last week, I've had birds suffering from a respiratory illness. They are on the mend thanks to antibiotics.

Has anyone experienced an MHP in the coop while there was any kind of illness? I have my older chicks outside in a smaller coop, and I am wondering if I should have the same setup for the MHP!

 

[azygous]

I have a young hen on antibiotics at present and my chicks are outdoors in the same run she's in. I figure that since none of the rest of my flock is sick, it's something that strong immune systems will deal with. And this is one of the reasons I'm brooding my chicks with the flock - so they will be exposed to pathogens and develop antibodies.

Now, if I had a new chicken getting sick every other day, I would be nervous about having the chicks in the middle of it.

 

[FlyWheel]

Well, the babies are now with the grownups down in the Lower 40. No MHP though, there is no electricity down there to run it. Not that they need it; they haven't been using it for nearly two weeks now*, even when they did they preferred sleeping on top of it anyway. I do have a nesting box inside their coop area in case one of them wants a bit of privacy.

They are separated by wire mesh both inside their section of the coop and outside in the run. That way they can get used to the g'rups and vice versa. I usually wait until new chicks are at least half the size of the existing birds before I let them intermingle. That way at least they have a better chance when it comes to establishing the new pecking order, which they will have to endure, like it or not!

I can't believe I still have all seven and they're still healthy! So much for the subtraction part of Chicken Math!

* I guess that means my membership on this thread has expired, huh?

 

[Blooie]

I've found that the smaller they are the less pecking order issues I have. As long as I put out multiple feeders and waterers the y get plenty to eat, and because the Bigs have seen the Littles from early on they don't perceive them as any kind of threat to their carefully arranged pecking order.

 

[FlyWheel]

I guess that's true if they have been raised from hatching alongside the others, but my adult birds didn't even know the little ones existed until I bought them out yesterday. Nor do they have a mama or broody hen to look after them, as it looks from your photos yours did. I would rather they get to know one another through the safety of the chicken wire first. Also it lets me keep each on their proper diet; the layers on laying pellets the growing pullets on grower feed.

P.S. I notice the littler ones are being kept separated from the adults in your coop too.


Basically that's the way I have it in mine.

 

[junebuggena]

I guess that's true if they have been raised from hatching alongside the others, but my adult birds didn't even know the little ones existed until I bought them out yesterday. Nor do they have a mama or broody hen to look after them, as it looks from your photos yours did. I would rather they get to know one another through the safety of the chicken wire first. Also it lets me keep each on their proper diet; the layers on laying pellets the growing pullets on grower feed. P.S. I notice the littler ones are being kept separated from the adults in your coop too. Basically that's the way I have it in mine.

Just feed everyone a grower or folk raiser. Safe for all. And integration really does go much smoother when the chicks are young, and the adults have had a week or two to get used to them.

 

[Blooie]

I guess that's true if they have been raised from hatching alongside the others, but my adult birds didn't even know the little ones existed until I bought them out yesterday. Nor do they have a mama or broody hen to look after them, as it looks from your photos yours did. I would rather they get to know one another through the safety of the chicken wire first. Also it lets me keep each on their proper diet; the layers on laying pellets the growing pullets on grower feed.

P.S. I notice the littler ones are being kept separated from the adults in your coop too.


Basically that's the way I have it in mine.

Nope, not one of the adults in any of these photos was a Mama Hen. All of the chicks in these photos were purchased, either from My Pet Chicken or a local feed store and brought home. After a day or so in the brooder in the house, they went to the outdoor brooder with Mama Heating Pad. In the picture you selected, that's Dumb Daphne the Flock Complainer in the front looking at the chicks, and at the back of the pen is Ida, a Red Sex Link. I also posted a shot of Scout, our rooster, inside the pen with the chicks the first time we opened it up completely, and there's a sweet shot of Kat, a Buff Orpington, getting a beak-to-beak look at one of the chicks when their pen was opened too, plus lots of shots of the chicks at a few different ages, living happily with the rest of the chickens. Not a single broody hen was in the flock of adults. I WISH I could get a hen to go broody!! Just doesn't happen here for some reason. I had one broody, Agatha, a couple of years back and the result was a single chick, Scout. So what I have shown are a group of purchased chicks, no broody hen, and just the adults and chicks learning to co-mingle on their own terms.

If you have your pen set up similarly to mine, your integration should also go pretty smoothly once the adults are used to seeing the youngsters, but since yours are so much older and larger than mine are when I put them outside to live you may have to take extra care. Me, I just open the pen up when they are 3 weeks old so they can meet the adults face-to-face, and they go back into the pen at night. I do that for a few days, then the pen stays open all the time. The Littles can fit back in though the cracked open door, but the Bigs can't follow them. (Now of course I have added portals into the brooder pen as @azygous has.) I generally have full integration by the time the chicks are 4 weeks old and by the time they are 5 weeks old or so the brooder comes out of the run completely. I have a huge hollow log out there laying with the hollow side down. The chicks learn quite quickly that they can fit underneath, but the Bigs can't get under. So if it gets a little tense, they just head for the log or their brooder pen, whichever is closest.

Like @junebuggena I don't buy separate food for them. I use All Flock or Starter/Grower for every bird out there - layers, roosters, chicks and juveniles - and keep oyster shell in a separate container for the girls. Never had an issue doing it this way.....all are healthy, the adults are laying well, and the chicks are thriving.

This year I had 3 chicks I hatched here plus the ones we purchased. They are all living outdoors and have been since the hatchlings were each just a couple of days old. I kept them inside long enough to see that they could eat and drink and to make sure they knew how to use Mama Heating Pad. Then we bought some chicks, added them to the ones we hatched and they all went outside.

This year's group of chicks out in the brooder in the run. Two of them, Yokel and Sweet Pea, were hatched here. They were joined by Sluf a week and half later, just a day after he was hatched here, but he wasn't hatched and in this video yet.

 

[lazy gardener]

I want to weigh in re: age of integration. When I first joined BYC, I followed the party line: NEVER integrate chicks into the flock until they are as big as the adults... or almost so. 12 weeks was given as the golden standard. So, that's what I did. Integration went ok. Nothing spectacular. Then, MHP entered the scene, along with the increased ease of brooding chicks in the coop. Many of us found that integration went MUCH better when integrating youngsters... (my preference is to integrate between 3 and 6 weeks of age, and the more chicks being integrated, the easier it is) These littles are no where near being sexually mature, and therefore are not considered a threat to the pecking order. They are small enough that they aren't considered any kind of threat. Many of the hens respond to them the way they would to a pesky fly. And the littles are small enough that they can run circles around the older birds.

Re: feed: If calcium in layer feed were an issue, many of us would have chicks dropping dead. Or our hens would not survive to become healthy geriatric hens. And, what about the roosters who all live their whole lives on layer feed. How often do you see a sick rooster? As far as calcium goes, I venture to make an extremely uneducated guess that there is a heavy load of calcium in the diet of any chicken of any age who gets any amount of free range time. Many greens are very high in calcium. Ever seen a chicken chowing down on soil? Gotta be a fair amount of calcium there also. Bugs? Bet those tough exoskeletons are also loaded with it. That being the case, why is it that free range chickens are more healthy??? My preference when raising chicks is to switch the whole flock over to a multi flock feed (with oyster shell and egg shells on the side). If that's not available, I would choose grower. The ONLY reason that I EVER purchase layer feed is b/c it is less expensive.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I have a huge hollow log out there laying with the hollow side down. The chicks learn quite quickly that they can fit underneath, but the Bigs can't get under. So if it gets a little tense, they just head for the log or their brooder pen, whichever is closest.

I like the hollow log idea!

 

[Blooie]

The log works great! Look hard in the last photo - see all the Buff Brahma chicks under there - even way in the back?